Who drew the dragons and beasts, and why?
Almost all of the medieval books containing dragons and beasts at Hampshire Record Office would have been written by local scribes from monastic houses. The artists who added the illustrations never intended that animal forms should look natural. They were drawn deliberately unreal, sometimes forced into fantastic shapes, and they could be seen as distant relations of the Christian emblems of the lion, the calf, and the eagle. The frequent presence of serpentine forms throughout the Book of Kells for example, has been linked to pagan worship, and may represent the serpents that St Patrick is said to have driven out of Ireland. However, many pagan elements were absorbed into the practices of the early Christian church by missionaries seeking to convert pagans.
